John Healey: Labour facing a 'maelstrom'

The call from Ed Miliband’s office came through shortly before the earthquake
struck. John Healey, the shadow health secretary, was informed that Alan
Johnson had tendered his resignation. The news, he was told, would break
within the next few minutes.

John Healey is the most shadowy of shadow ministersPhoto: ANDREW CROWLEY

By Mary Riddell and Andrew Porter

7:30AM GMT 24 Jan 2011

Like other senior colleagues unaffected by the reshuffle, Mr Healey had remained in the dark until moments before the public announcement. As Alan Johnson cleared his desk and Mr Miliband phoned colleagues from his car to tell them they were moving posts, his health secretary was talking to the Daily Telegraph about Andrew Lansley’s NHS “revolution”. Unbeknown to him, or us, Labour was already embroiled in a revolution of its own.

When we speak again a few hours later, on the morning after the resignation, he says, loyally: “It was a faultless operation to deal with a very distressing situation for Alan.” But Labour, he concedes, is now facing “a maelstrom” in which critics of the decision to make Ed Balls shadow chancellor will seek to prove that two Eds are very much worse than one.

Mr Healey’s distance from Thursday’s furore seems fitting for a politician never at the epicentre of any storm. John Healey is the most shadowy of shadow ministers. He has risen tracelessly, partly because he has shunned any media spotlight. This is his first major interview, given to coincide with a speech at the King’s Fund on the NHS.

His diffidence and Prufrockish air should delude no one. Labour’s invisible man came second in the shadow cabinet elections, beating his old friend and Treasury colleague, Ed Balls. Despite his lack of experience, health professionals already think him “quietly impressive.” When Ed Miliband appointed him to the brief that could derail the government., he told the man chosen to champion Labour’s most cherished institution: “The NHS will be the judge and jury for us at the next election.”

In the meantime, the judge and jury of public opinion are pondering the opposition’s homegrown crisis. Mr Healey had no idea that Mr Johnson, on the surface a figure of sunny charm, was in such turmoil. “I know him as a good colleague,” he says. “He’s warm but very private about his personal life.”

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He suggests, however, that he did not consider Mr Johnson to be a durable shadow chancellor. “I agree he played an important role settling [things] down after the leadership election. .He’s done an excellent job in the short term and created a breathing space.”

Despite this slightly lukewarm praise, there is no doubt that he welcomes this week’s change. Unlike some senior colleagues and advisers, Mr Healey seems almost as pleased as Mr Balls by his preferment. He is convinced that the new shadow chancellor is the right man for now, despite acknowledging the appointment will unleash an onslaught on the supposed sons of Gordon.

“Ed will turn this into an economic debate, not a narrow political one about the deficit. He’ll change the terms of the debate and make it much harder. He’ll do what’s needed now, and throw [the subject] forwards. He’ll be a big handful for George Osborne.” And for Ed Miliband too?

“Ed Miliband has a right to expect the heavy lifting to be carried out by the Shadow Cabinet. Ed Balls will play a big part once we get through this maelstrom.” Ominous as this may sound to Mr Balls’s critics, Mr Healey approves of delegated power. The day before, he had given us a critique of Labour’s control freakery.

“In government, we became too ready to rely on the judgment of the big man at the top.” Gordon? “And Tony. It now seems to me, especially in opposition, that a lot more of the heavy lifting needs to be done by the shadow cabinet. Ed, as leader, should expect us to be doing it.. I admire David Cameron in this respect. Yes, I do. He is allowing his cabinet ministers to run their departments. I see the potential political advantage of being presidential in doing that.”

While Mr Healey enters the caveat of Andrew Lansley, viewed by many as running his fiefdom without sufficient input from the leadership, we sense a whiff of frustration. “In opposition, leadership demands something different from us, and I think Ed Miliband has provided that.” Does he think, as he seems to suggest, that the leader should give his team more scope for “heavy lifting”?

“I think more of us need to be out there. Many of us are trying ... I don’t think Ed Miliband lacks confidence. I don’t think he lacks determination. I don’t think he lacks the will to see shadow cabinet doing a lot more.” As Mr Healey says, it is hard for the opposition to get noticed so early in a parliament. Mr Balls, the ultimate heavy-lifter, is – in his opinion – about to disprove that rule.

As a former Treasury minister of long-standing, Mr Healey is convinced that Labour lost the economic argument not in the vacuum of the leadership debates but in the hiatus after Alistair Darling’s 2009 budget. “In the four days after the Chief Secretary did the traditional Newsnight interview, the first cabinet minister out was Alan Johnson on Sunday, talking about flu. That was when the Conservative onslaught was planned and executed.”

As he rang Mr Balls to offer congratulations, Mr Healey may have thought it bizarre that events had so eclipsed his own first foray into the limelight. His aim, in his King’s Fund speech, was not to rubbish Mr Lansley, whose plans he described as “consistent, coherent and comprehensive”, but to stress that the NHS will, under the Bill published this week, be for profit not for patients as it conforms to market rules.

His aim is to annexe the health professionals outraged by reforms and use their disquiet to persuade MPs of all parties to attack the legislation and demolish the most extreme elements of a “new system that has competition as its first principle.”

When we ask if he means the privatisation of the NHS, he says: “I don’t like to put it in those terms.” Despite his courteous ways, Mr Healey is not as staid as his clerkish exterior suggests. He once sailed both ways across the Atlantic, has recently taken up ballroom dancing and has worked as a bricklayer in California.

Nor is his thinking always obedient. Although he approves of 50p tax, he implies that Labour has failed to sell the case for taxation and hints that the top rate is not as immutable as Mr Miliband says. If economic circumstances improve, “you might make income tax your first change, or you might [take] a different tax decision.”

That, some day, may be for the Labour leader to decide. Having professed his admiration for Mr Cameron, we ask if Mr Healey also admires Mr Miliband. He answers obliquely. “I like Ed Miliband very much,” he says. I worked with him at the Treasury, and in my view people under-estimate him. He has got what it takes.”

Whether Mr Miliband now earns the undiluted admiration of his team, not to mention the country, as the shock of the last few days subsides may depend on his ability to harness his combative new shadow chancellor. As with the future of the NHS, the jury is out.